THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THIS BLOG IS TO SHARE WITH THE READER ISSUES OF HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE FROM A PROGRESSIVE PERSPECTIVE.
ORDER OF MOST READERS OF THIS BLOG: USA, RUSSIA, FRANCE, UNITED KINGDOM, GERMANY, UKRAINE,CANADA, INDIA,and CHINA.

Sunday, 28 February 2016

The entire world is well aware of the humanitarian crisis arising from Muslim
refugees fleeing war-torn countries that include Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan
and Afghanistan. The countries are all Muslim and the common trait they share
is that the US and its European and Middle East allies engaged in military
solutions to political crises that have not spilled over into a massive trans-continental
refugee crisis. The refugee tragedy is a massive humanitarian one according to
the United Nations, and it is becoming worse because the principal country,
namely the US, causing the refugee crisis is absolving itself of any
responsibility from this crisis and only focuses on where to create the next military
intervention. This does not mean that Russia backing the Assad regime is free
of culpability. However, the Russians are trying to weaken the jihadist
elements in Syria that are forcing the mass displacement of people. http://www.thenation.com/article/europes-refugee-crisis-was-made-in-america/

In the official White House web site, the US states that 12 million
people or half of Syria’s population has been displaced since 2011 and it is
entirely the fault of the Assad regime. https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/15/what-you-need-know-about-syrian-refugee-crisis-and-what-us-doing-help\
The US position is that along with the Syrian government, Russia, Iran and to a
lesser extent China are really responsible because they would not permit the US
and its regional allies – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states – to remove
Assad from power and place a regime of their liking. In other words do exactly
what they did in Libya where things have worked so remarkably well since the US
and its allies along with al-Qaeda removed Muammar Gaddafi from power.

Although by no mean the sole
culprit, the US was the driving force behind military interventions that
destabilized every one of these countries and caused the dislocation of four
million refugees from Syria lone and millions more from the other Muslim
war-torn nations that the US and its allies decided to destabilize for
geopolitical and economic advantages in the last fifteen years. Although the
West presents itself as humanitarian, developing countries host more than 80%
of the world’s refugees. According to the United Nations, the world refugee population
hit 60 million in 2014 and it surpassed that figure in 2015, largely because of
conflicts invariably created not owing to local opposing groups – government vs.
rebels – but foreign interventions of one type or the other. http://www.unric.org/en/world-refugee-day/26978-new-report-developing-countries-host-80-of-refugees-
\http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html

Those who read about the refugee crisis from a distance may see Greece
as Europe’s warehouse. However, a closer examination of the refugees in Greece
reveals that this tiny Balkan country could evolve into Europe’s concentration
camp in many respects minus the “final solution”. This is not only because of
the dreadful conditions that prevail for refugees everything from lack of food
and medicine, but because the number one reason for the humanitarian crisis and
the reaction of the entire Western World is racism. Non-white Muslims trying to
enter the predominantly white European continent is an anathema to Europeans
whether they are neo-Nazis, conservative or even liberal in many cases who do
not want their way of life, social structure and culture contaminated with Muslim
influences. Of course the European businesses love the cheap labor migrants
provide, but they detest the people that provide cheap labor. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-25/greece-warns-of-humanitarian-disaster-from-isolation-on-refugees

European racism and religious prejudice toward Muslims has deep roots
that date back to the crusades. The Muslim refugee crisis has intensified such
latent prejudices and it has made the Muslims the scapegoats for all calamities
that have fallen on Europe amid contracting economies and slow job and income
growth. People would much prefer to blame the Muslims running from their
war-torn countries that the West ravaged than their governments and
corporations responsible for the crisis in the first place. The US war on
terror resurrected racism and xenophobia to new heights and the Muslims are now
the new Jews of the Western World. (J.L. Thomas, Scapegoating Islam; http://socialistworker.org/2016/02/08/europes-rising-tide-of-refugee)

On 25 February 2016, the EU interior ministers meeting in Brussels centered
on Austria’s proposal to lock out all refugees from entering Europe by
essentially keeping them in Greece. This would mean that Greece, which has lost
an estimate 30% of its GDP because of IMF-EU imposed austerity since 2010,
would be saddled with the Muslim refugee crisis that many around the world
predict would explode into a massive humanitarian crisis very shortly.
Considering that one-third of Greece’s population is in effect below poverty
and official unemployment is 25% with unofficial rate at closer to 35%, the
country would revert to its 1950s status as one of the world’s poorest nations,
if the refugee crisis is added as a permanent feature to the rest of the
economic problems it is facing. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/25/europe-braces-major-humanitarian-crisis-greece-row-refugees

Greece simply lacks the physical facilities to accommodate refugees that
need housing, hospitals and clinics, food and clothing until a permanent
solution is found at the EU and/or United Nations level that seems to be doing
very little to solve this crisis. Imagine one nurse per 25-30 patients in a
hospital that frequently runs out of bed sheets and all kinds of basic
medication. Imagine a country that can hardly feed its own people having to feed
an additional one to two million refugees in the next few years.

The EU expects Greece, a country that is in complete shambles because of
austerity, to stem the refugee flow to Europe. Dimitris Avramopoulos, Greek
conservative politician and EU commissioner for migration warned earlier this
month that the humanitarian crisis in very real amid a deadlock among the EU
members on the issue and the US wiping its hands clean and arguing it is a
European problem. The irony here is that the entire world knows the culprit is
the US that caused the crisis by going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and destabilizing
the rest of the Middle East by backing various jihadist rebels from Libya to
Syria that eventually turned against the West. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/eu-gives-greece-one-month-to-improve-conditions-for-refugees

Even a number of Republicans have argued that the Obama and Bush administrations
caused the crisis in Muslim countries that gave rise to the refugee problem.
However, no Republican or Democrat is willing to provide the appropriate humanitarian
assistance or accept refugees that the US created. No Republican or Democrat is
willing to open the borders for Muslim refugees. On the contrary, there are
those like Donald Trump who want to keep all Muslims out and screen them on a
case by case basis because the assumption is they are terrorists, even if they
are children. Of the 50 states I the US, 31 have declared they will not accept
Syrian refugees. If the US refuses to accept its responsibility for the crisis
it has created with its allies, and the Europeans are very divided on this
issue with Germany playing the role of moderate, this leaves the problem for
Greece. http://time.com/4126371/these-5-facts-explain-americas-shameful-reaction-to-syrian-refugees/

Since January 2015 Greece has been under the SYRIZA Party that calls
itself leftist but whose policies are a mirror image of the neoliberal ones
that the previous conservative government followed. Under the SYRIZA regime,
the country deteriorated faster because the IMF and EU demanded even greater
cuts in pensions and wages, even greater cuts in social programs, including
health and education, and higher indirect taxes that fall on the masses. On top
of impoverishing Greece by imposing austerity, the EU plan according to SYRIZA
leader and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to reduce the country into a refugee
warehouse. On 24 February 2016, the prime minister stated: " We will not accept the transformation of our country to a
permanent warehouse for human beings, while at the same time we continue to
operate in Europe and at summit meetings as if nothing is happening. We will not put up with a series of
countries that not only erect fences on their borders but at the same time do
not accept to put up a single refugee." http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/

Greece is a country that is in shambles politically, economically and
socially, and Tsipras is partly to blame because he won election on the promise
to end austerity and he has continued it to the detriment of the popular base
that elected him. The austerity measures that the Greek government has accepted
and the capital flight by the country’s few thousand wealthy people has
resulted in the complete de-capitalization and utter dependence on the EU. Instead
of leaving the EU and making a fresh start under a national currency, Greece
opted to remain under the German-imposed patron-client model of integration. This
integration model relegates them to a status not very different from that of
the rest of northern Balkan countries. On top of the financial and economic
crisis that essentially dismantled society as the Greeks knew it before austerity,
the EU imposes a refugee problem on a country that is essentially not much better
off than its northern Balkan neighbors.

As I stated above, most refugees in the world are in fact in developing
countries. There are more than four million Syrians who are now refugees in Lebanon,
Jordan, Turkey, and even Iraq a country from which people are leaving for the
West. Although the EU struck a deal with Turkey not to allow refugees across
the Aegean Sea into Greece, the Turkish government accepted the promise of $3.3
billion payment from Europe in exchange for cracking down on the refugee
trafficking business that is very lucrative for human smugglers. Turkey has allowed about one million refugees through the Aegean Sea and
by land into Greece. It is estimated that more than 3000 have drowned and many
thousands died along the way trying to reach Western Europe. For its part,
Turkey argues that it cannot perform miracles and stop refugees from crossing
over to Greece. There are stories of tragic proportion with children having
lost track of their parents and continuing to walk across Greece trying to
reach northwest Europe only to be stopped somewhere along the way in Eastern
Europe because Hungary is adamant about taking any refugees in the country. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/turkey-refugee-crisis-time-europe-action-160210115931274.html

Much of eastern and northwest Europe as well as the UK refuse to accept
the slightly more generous German proposal for shared responsibility. If
nothing else, the refugee crisis has fractured the otherwise weak EU solidarity
threatened by the UK as well as Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and of course
the perennial Greek crisis. German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has stated
that his country could accept up to 500,000 refugees per year for several
years, but he demands the rest of EU share the responsibility. Recognizing that
Greece will simply become Europe’s concentration camp for Muslim refugees, the
German government is asking for cooperation partly because the crisis has
intensified nationalism at all levels and some countries are openly questioning
the benefits of staying in the European Union. http://www.ecfr.eu/refugee_crisis

The tragedy of the US-made refugee crisis in the Middle East that has
spilled over into Europe is that a) it will probably take a long time to be
resolved and b) the US will continue creating such crises in the near future
regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is elected president in 2016. The
EU has shown that at its core racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice runs
very deep and it is unlikely to change. Muslims are as much the new Jewish
scapegoats of Europe as they are for the US. Although anti-Semitism is not
exactly erased in the Western World, the new focus of white Christian prejudice
is on Muslims whose lands the West has been ravaging since the era of European
colonialism in the 19th century. No European leader could win
political office advocating a more tolerant policy toward Muslims any more than
an American politician can win office without advocating a tough position on
the war on terror, a euphemism for the continued military-solution option to US-instigated
political crises in the Middle East.

The US will probably start another military intervention and most
certainly continue to destabilize the Middle East under its next president,
whether Republican or Democrat. This will lead to a more intensified crisis
that will mean more refugees and an even greater humanitarian crisis than we
are seeing in 2016. The defense industry in the US is very powerful and the
political and ideological orientation toward militarism is deeply ingrained in
the culture of PAX AMERICANA. War, intervention and destabilizing governments
are all part of a way of life for the imperial America that continues to see
itself as the world’s policeman and the world’s preeminent superpower despite
its rapidly eroding economic role against the reality of China’s global economic
hegemony.

Monday, 22 February 2016

In the
battle between a giant multinational corporation known for its record of tax
evasion around the world as well as its hypocrisy of manufacturing in Asia not
because of low wages but “talent availability”, APPLE is not yielding to the
FBI/Justice Department request for hacking into the cell phones because the big
winner will be SAMSUNG and the other ten largest cell phone companies in the
world. APPLE has argued that the US government wants to unlock the cell phone
that the shooters in the San Bernardino killings used. However, the goal of the
US government under Obama claiming to be the protector of civil liberties is to
gain access to all cell phones and carry out surveillance for all users at
will. This is not only a constitutional issue that essentially touches on the
Fourth Amendment – right to privacy – but it also opens a Pandora’s box because
other governments would demand same access as the US has. When it became known
that the NSA was spying at home and abroad using the giant tech companies of
Silicon Valley, the position of Obama administration officials was that
foreigners were not protected under the Fourth Amendment, while US citizens
needed to understand that national security is above their Constitutional rights.

On 16
February 2016, the US government convinced a California federal judge to have
Apple reveal encryption security features in its cell phones. APPLE has been
fighting back both with public opinion campaigns as well as using its lobbying efforts
in Congress as a counterweight to the Justice Department. Because it is well
known that APPLE along with GOOGLE and all major tech companies had secret
agreements with the US government to conduct illegal surveillance at home and globally,
it seems somewhat puzzling at this juncture why APPLE is fighting the Justice
Department. Is APPLE so interested in protecting citizens for idealistic reasons,
for the sake of furthering democracy, or is it simply a case of protecting its
global market-share?

Thus far,
no government in the world has made the kind of demands of APPLE that the US
has made. However, the US of course invokes American Exceptionalism against the
background of the “war on terror”, just as it invoked anti-Communism during the
Cold War when civil liberties were readily trampled. However, that they are
asking APPLE to provide code access to cell phones clearly indicates that the
Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and the FBI have not been
doing their jobs as effectively as they claim. Moreover, the question is where
does surveillance stop? If there is no privacy of any kind, as we have
discovered after the Edward Snowden revelations regarding National Security
Agency violations of the Fourth Amendment, then why not suspend the
Constitution altogether and declare a State of Emergency? Why go through the motions and the thin faced of
a democratic society at all?

For APPLE
the argument is hardly the constitutional rights of citizens but global market
share. I repeat that if APPLE yields on this issue, the other twelve major cell
phone makers in the world will prevail in the global market, most notably
SAMSUNG. It is a myth that APPLE or any
cell phone maker is concerned about privacy when these dozen large phone companies
around the world have been violating the privacy of consumers for many years by
illegally collecting and commercializing information of their users without
their knowledge. APPLE along with SAMSUNG is among the biggest violators when
it comes to privacy, so it stretches one’s imagination to come up with reasons
why it is fighting the FBI/Justice Department now. If there was a financial
incentive for APPLE to give the FBI what it wanted, it would have done as secretly
as it collects information and never discloses it to its users. However, there
is no incentive, but there is massive potential harm from the competition.

The America
people know very well that their government violates the constitution in the
name of national security and it does so randomly and not just in extreme cases
such as that involving the unique incident of the San Bernardino case. The surveillance
state would not have been possible in the absence of the tech companies cooperating
with government. This is not an issue of whether is the US is moving closer to
a police state. By its own criteria as defined in the Constitution the US has been
practicing police state methods that go back to the early Cold War when
Communism was used as the justification. Today, it is terrorism, which
ironically the US helps to strengthen by its own policies in Islamic countries,
including Syria where ISIL has been operating with the considerable support of
US allies in the last five years. After all, there was no ISIS before the US and
its EU and regional Middle East allies decided to overthrow Assad in Syria.
Even when the Russians were bombing ISIS targets, the US and its allies were
critical, giving the impression to ISIS that the priority was removing Assad
not ISIS.

The APPLE issue reveals very clearly
that the more technology dependent a society becomes, the more it slips
down the road of a police state at home because it is pursuing militarism
abroad. This does not mean that technology in and of itself is a bad thing
– no Luddite thesis here – but that the use of technology by corporations
and the state makes it easier to have a police state. Civil liberties are eroding very rapidly
in the US and one reason the country ranks at about the same level as
Turkey when it comes to social justice is because its practices are about as
democratic. The “security hoax” which the government has been pursuing at
home and abroad has actually helped to strengthen not just the military
industrial complex but tech companies that receive multi-billion contracts
from government agencies. The state-corporate nexus has been responsible for
the evolution toward a police state that has become more necessary than
ever as society is becoming increasingly polarized socioeconomically. Security
is the last resort of the state to defend welfare capitalism that accounts
for the downward social mobility in America and the increasing alienation
of citizens who believe their government serves the top ten percent of the
wealthiest people –

Saturday, 20 February 2016

In February
2007, the United Nations General Assembly declared 20 February “World Social Justice Day”. The concept
of social justice can be traced to ancient religions and philosophies East and
West – Hinduism to Islam and Christianity, Marx and Gandhi. Arising from the
Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment liberal philosophy, Harvard University
philosopher John Rawls who characterized the modern concept of social justice
as: "Each
person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of
society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the
loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by
others." (Theory of Justice, 1971).

While there are
those who maintain that humanity is better off today in terms of social justice
than when Plato addressed the issue almost 2,500 years ago, certainly better
off than when Marx dealt with it in the 19th century or Mahatma Gandhi
addressed it in the mid-20th century, there is increasing empirical
evidence that society is becoming polarized socially and geographically.
Despite decolonization, neo-colonization in a variety of forms under economic
hegemony of multinationals persists. Despite reducing poverty since 1995 from
about 33 million to about 20 million, the idea that about 100 people own more
wealth than half of the planet’s population is hardly encouraging for social
justice.

Urging all
members to promote social justice in accordance with the goals of the World
Summit for Social Development of March 1995, the UN took the symbolic step of
trying to address the most serious problems including:

1. Poverty eradication; - poverty has decreased
largely because of the rise of Asia, but it has increased in the developed
countries since 1995.

2. Unemployment and decent work - real unemployment is
double the official numbers because of people discourage to look for work and the
number of part time and and seasonal work has risen since 1995

3. Gender equity - women’s labor participation has
risen in most countries while income inequality remains a problem as does the “glass
ceiling”. While gender equality improved very modestly for professional upper middle
class women, it has declined for the vast majority at the bottom of the
socioeconomic ladder along with declining living standards for all workers
since the “great recession” of 2008.

4. Access to social well-being – this is especially
problematic for all minorities across developed countries, but more so in the
US where institutionalized racism is even more pronounced as declining living
standards impact first the lives of blacks and Hispanics.

5. Justice for all – no one would argue with any empirical
data to prove it that there is justice for all. There is certainly justice for
all according to their socioeconomic and ethnic-racial background.

Although there are many conservatives and ultra-right
wing elements in the US and around the world that believe social justice is
just another way of promoting Communism, world leaders met under the UN
umbrella in March 1995 to address social justice problems. At the time, the New
World Order was still evolving and markets were expanding because of the former
Soviet’s Bloc’s integration into the capitalist world economy and China’s
emergence as a global economic power. In the middle of the decade there was enthusiasm
about the triumph of capitalism over Communism and governments, bourgeois politicians,
journalists and academics were singing the praises of the market economy that
promised to eradicate all social ills and create a mythical “Shangri La” world
across the planet. That was 21 years ago and since then social justice has
lessened considerably if we examine the record by the numbers in each of the
domain that the UN listed as needing progress.

The neoliberal
policies that the developed countries have been pursuing and promoting across
the globe are a catalyst to the decline of social justice along with the
US-NATO military-solution foreign policy that has created massive drain on
civilian economies, accounts for increasingly authoritarian domestic policies
and destabilizes parts of the world that in turn destabilize the West by
engaging in unconventional warfare – uprisings and terrorism – combined with
massive migrant flows.

Analyzing the
progress of social justice in the US and Europe in the last two decades one is
struck by: Sharp decline in middle class living standards; 2. Higher unemployment,
especially youth unemployment; 3. Demise of working class rights, especially
collective bargaining challenged both in the US and many EU countries; 4. Social
welfare programs erosion and a corresponding sharp rise in corporate welfare along
with massive tax breaks to the degree that the largest multinationals pay no
taxes; 5. Rise in poverty partly because of rising personal debt, declining
incomes and wider income gaps between the poor and rich; 6. Rise in racism and
xenophobia across the EU and US as the masses are accepting ultra-right wing
and conservative arguments that the fault for society’s ills rest with the
minorities, already in the country or recent arrivals.

While it is
great for the UN to at least have a special day set aside for social justice,
the UN is utterly helpless because its most powerful members and the world’s
G-20 (richest nations account for 80% of the wealth) resist any commitment to
social justice because it would erode the neoliberal policies intended to
strengthen the top 10 percent for whose benefit the political economy exists.
When right-wing political supporter and billionaire Charles Koch agrees with
Sanders that there is a rigged political economy based on “cronyism and inequality”
what is left to say by a critic from the progressive camp? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/19/charles-koch-says-he-agrees-bernie-sanders-one-issue/80611140/

Besides corporate
welfare system that concentrates wealth at the very top of the socioeconomic
pyramid, the US as the world’s most powerful military power continues to
subsidize a parasitic defense sector that erodes the political economy and
along with it social justice. The signal the US sends to the world politically is
hardly encouraging about social justice, According to the OECD the US ranks 27th
out of 31 countries, difficult to explain considering it preaches social
justice to the rest of the world. There is something seriously wrong when the
US ranks slightly above Turkey that has a horrible human rights record,
according to the State Department.

When the US
condemns Turkey for its lack of social justice but ranks at the same level as
Turkey, the only way to rationalize the hypocrisy is to invoke “American
Exceptionalism”. Apologists of the US as a leader in democracy, a country that
is already well on its way to embracing many aspects of a police state,
especially in the domain of surveillance as the dispute with Apple Phone
indicates, insist that criteria that it applies to the rest of the world does
not apply to the US because it has a special mandate from Divine Providence. In
short, the US can continue down the road of a police state because of Pax
Americana and its special role in the community of nations. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/social-justice_n_1035363.html

In the 2016 presidential campaign, no
candidate other than Sanders has touched on social justice. No media outlet, mainstream
think tank or academics hired to analyze socioeconomic and political issues for
the mass media discuss social justice. This is because it means addressing the
issue of corporate welfare and a tax structure that favors millionaires. Social
justice entails fixing the archaic infrastructure – everything from water
plants and pipes leaking lead into drinking water to bridges and schools - instead
of pouring money into defense to allegedly fight terrorism when all evidence
points to the US indirectly supporting the jihadists through third parties –
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, etc. Social justice means accepting
responsibility for causing chaos in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt
among some of the countries where Western intervention has brought instability
and resulted in mass migration and absence of social justice.

While the
concern of people across the world is a better life for themselves and their
children, governments have yielded to corporate hegemonic influence on policy
because multinational corporations subsidized by the state enjoy policy influence
on all fronts. For the US strengthening
the defense sector so it can remain the world’s policeman and plan for more
interventions is about the only issue concerning the media and all presidential
candidates, with Sanders addressing economic inequality. Even though public
opinion polls among all voters indicate very clearly that living standards
matter in their lives, the media, politicians and well-paid analysts continue
to promote terrorism and militarism as top priorities. The mind of the public
is constantly bombarded with fear of a foreign enemy when the enemy is the tiny
domestic socioeconomic elite that exert influence over policy.

Although the US
ranks very low on social justice, things are hardly better in Europe. Social justice
took a downward turn after the “great recession” of 2008 for all countries in
the developed world, and a very sharp downturn for the periphery nations of the
EU after 2010. The changing of the integration model from inter-dependence to a
patron-cline model has entailed a rise in unemployment, underemployment, poverty
and lower living standards for workers and the middle class for Italy, Spain,
Ireland, Portugal, and especially Greece. Austerity policies have concentrated
wealth within the core of northwest Europe, draining capital from the rest.
This has resulted in political polarization with people looking to neo-Nazi and
neo-Fascist groups or to left wing parties for solutions that the bankrupt parliamentary
system is not providing.

Social justice
cannot take place under the existing neoliberal political economy that works to
diminish it. Nor is it realistic to expect all capitalist countries, as different
as they are in their history and unique traditions, to model themselves after
Norway that is about as close to the UN social justice goals as any nation can
be. It is unrealistic to expect the political
and social elites responsible for the absence of social justice to deliver the
UN goals on this matter. Only grass roots movements intended to undertake
systemic change can make a difference. If people expect social justice to be
handed to them by the same people that are depriving it, they are delusional
and things will only become much worse.

Sunday, 14 February 2016

College
students study race and class in sociology courses or in Black Studies
programs, although it should be part of the core curriculum for all incoming college
freshmen who need to understand the history of this multi-racial, multi-ethnic,
multi-religious society. The issue of race identity vs. class identity in the
US is as old as the institution of slavery followed by an apartheid society
from the end of the Civil War to the Supreme Court decision of 1896 in Plessy
v. Fergusson, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and down to the early 21st
century with lingering cultural and institutional racism manifesting itself in
everything from the criminal justice system to public schools and public health.

The
sociological and political issue of race transcending class and vice versa is
controversial depending on one’s ideological perspective. White liberals and black
nationalists subordinate class to race, while varieties of socialists for the
most part, although hardly unanimous, argue that class transcends race and it
must be so in order to address the broader problems of social justice. The
dominant culture and institutional structure that includes government at all
levels and everything from the educational system and churches to media have always
subordinated class to race. It is hardly surprising to this day that this is
what the majority reflect in public opinion polls as well, considering that
America is much less class conscious than other developed nations despite the
lack of social justice.

In
February 2016, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) decided to endorse Hillary
Clinton on the basis of her record of support for blacks arousing the curiosity
of many who immediately looked into the financial backing of the CBC to
determine who exactly was paying for the endorsement. Beyond the obvious
Washington corporate lobbyists linked to the CBC, there are several salient
questions that need some analysis, including class consciousness vs. race
consciousness in America, and why is it that there is a blurring of the two.

Is the
political economy best served currently by both black and white elites and the
white dominant culture and institutional structure perpetuating racial
divisions over class divisions? Is identity in America based on skin color,
ethnicity, religion and gender rather than class? Does race consciousness mean
the same thing in the early 21st century when a black president has
been elected twice as it did in the mid-19th century when black
abolitionist Frederick Douglass lived in a society where race and class were
the same under the institution of slavery? Is the CBC following a long-standing
tradition of black churches that conform within the white establishment?

Historically,
black clergy have kept the congregation focused on spiritual matters within the
black community isolated from the white mainstream; some have gone along with
the white establishment both conservative and liberal so they can keep their
turf; others as during the 1950s and 1960s became politicized and demanded
reforms within the system or declared Black Nationalism as the solution. Does
the fact that CBC exist indicate societal racism that needs a political power
broker? If so, what does this reveal about race vs. class identity and why the
former transcends the latter in America when it is not the case in other
multi-racial societies?

The
racial identity vs. class identity issue emerged in the forefront of the
presidential election of 2016 when two white people in the Democrat Party –
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders - were competing for the voting bloc of
African-Americans who supported overwhelmingly Barak Obama in his bid to the
White House. Despite the fact that the Republican Party had a black
presidential candidate (Ben Carson), in February 2016 the Congressional Black
Caucus chose to support the former Sec/State Hillary Clinton, arguing she
represents the interests of black people, presumably all of them and not just
the 35,000 black millionaires in a population of about 39 million blacks or 13%
of the total in the US.

It is important to note that big
capital was as solidly behind the decision of the Black Caucus as it has been
behind the Clinton campaign. There is something seriously wrong and highly
hypocritical when the Black Caucus claims to represent all black people, but
its funding sources come from the largest US-based multinational corporations
influencing its decision to endorse Clinton rather than Sanders. http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/12/who_endorsed_hillary_clinton_the_congressional

“Members of the CBC PAC board include Daron Watts, a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the
highly addictive opioid OxyContin; Mike Mckay and Chaka Burgess, both lobbyists for Navient, the student loan giant
that was spun off of Sallie Mae; former Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., a
lobbyist who represents a range of clients, including work
last year on behalf of Lorillard Tobacco, the maker of Newport cigarettes;
and William A. Kirk, who lobbies for a cigar industry trade group on
a range of tobacco regulations.”

Although the promise of capitalism
is that it is color-blind and a system that provides equal opportunities for
all to attain upward social mobility, the empirical reality not just in the US
but across the globe has been anything but the promise. The market system has
always taken advantage of race, gender, and ethnicity to divide the working
class and middle class and to benefit by paying lower wages to those groups in
society that are discriminated. Just as there have been lower wages for women,
similarly the white-black wage ratio has also been lower working to the benefit
of the employer using race to realize higher profits, thus contributing to the strengthening
of US capitalism. Racial stereotypes that the media and the dominant culture
perpetuate – blacks are prone to crime, collecting welfare, and draining the
social welfare system – help to maintain racial divisions that keep a large
percentage of the minority community in a permanent state of social
subservience.(Nicola Ginsburgh, “Race
and class in the US” Issue: 134 (27th March 2012) http://isj.org.uk/race-and-class-in-the-us/)

Capital
accumulation would not be possible in the absence of the active role of the
state. This is where politicians enter into the picture of promoting
co-optation so that capitalists encounter the least possible resistance to
their goals. Following a long-standing tradition of yielding to white bourgeois
co-optation, which has been an effective mechanism of sociopolitical control of
the minority population, the Black Caucus invoked race above class to endorse
Hillary Clinton. That she is running on a platform to maintain the neoliberal
status quo that has kept blacks in the lowest income category of any social
group in America in the last half century, including under Obama was not
mentioned because the same big capital contributors to Clinton are also contributors
to the CBC bought and paid for.

Without
mentioning big money contributors behind the endorsement, the Black Caucus
argued that Hilary and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, were
involved in the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s and Hillary best represents
the “Obama legacy” whereas her opponent has been critical of America’s first
black president for caving to Wall Street and the establishment. Two-thirds of
Americans believe that the class divide is a more serious issue than immigration
or race relations, given that the elusive American Dream has become just a
dream for the vast majority, causing polarization in society in across all
social realms including race relations.

Historically
the American Dream – upward social mobility from the working class to the
middle class - was never as easily attainable for blacks as it was for whites.
Before the Civil War, the American Dream was more or less the domain of the
white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite, but it was hardly much different from the
end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination based on race,
color, religion, sex, or national origin.
While there was a gradual opening for upward social mobility to blacks, it was
hardly comparable to the rate of whites. More significant, the vast majority of
the black population continued to make up a disproportionate part of America’s
poor, lacking decent health and education. Although the Civil Right Act
officially put an end to the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Fergusson
(1896) of “separate but equal”, it hardly ended the practice throughout the
country of an apartheid society.

As
shocking as many people may find it, there are some similarities between South
Africa and the US, though clearly the US is the military leader of the world
and still a powerful economy despite the global challenge that China has
presented in a remarkably short period of time. Because of the institution of
slavery that relegated black people in the southern states to the status of
property that whites owned, and because of Jim Crow laws at the state and local
level enforcing segregation and apartheid conditions, a hierarchy evolved based
not just on class but also race. Almost like a caste system, blacks were at the
bottom of the hierarchy, followed non-Western European immigrant workers from of
any ethnicity regardless of color, and then white workers. Not surprisingly,
the slowly evolving black middle class also fell into the same race-based
hierarchy, considering that many cities have historic black middle class neighborhoods,
just as they do of other ethnic groups.

The endeavors
of civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s, including Martin Luther King to
have race eliminated as criteria and to have blacks accepted on the same
meritocracy-based criteria as whites was actually conceived by Europeans during
the Age of Reason in the 18th century when the US was born as a
republic. While the Founding Fathers incorporated the value system of the
Enlightenment in the Constitution and laws, they excluded minorities and women.
The white European bourgeois philosophy and values of the 18th
century are deeply ingrained in American society that places the individual
above the collective, thus protecting the individual property owner and slave
owner.

In a
recent article entitled“Martin Luther King Jr. Transcended Color and Class and So Can You,”liberal Huffington Post reflects the ideal of 18th century Enlightenment
liberal thinking against any communitarian values. “In reality, no one can set another free.
True equality arises from within. When you become it and live it, your
demonstration of strength of character creates your ticket to freedom. Each one
of us contains all the power we require to set ourselves free. Ultimately, it's
an inside job.” The suggestion
that Martin Luther King transcended class and race is as absurd as the one that
freedom comes from within. Of course, he was the first to admit as much.

This 18th
century liberal ideal assumes that the individual has choice in the matter of
transcending race and class, when in fact the institutional structure
determines racism and classism. No one decided to become a slave while all
along thinking in her/his mind he/she is free. Slaves did not have the ability
to free themselves from the institution simply by imagining they were free.
This is only something that religion promoted to provide slaves with a spiritual
outlet for their predicament in daily material life and something that white
masters promoted along with black preachers, although for different reasons,
resulting in maintaining the status quo.

American
history is rich with examples of black leaders conforming to the white
establishment and endorsing the political enemies of workers and especially black
workers en masse. Some such cases have been very egregious that backfired on
the black community. For example, the black leadership in Chicago chose to
support Rahm Emanuel, another Obama protégé committed to neoliberal policies
and conducting policy to strengthen the richest citizens of the city. The black
elites and black community leaders for the most part rejected Jesus Garcia, the
candidate running on a populist progressive platform with a broad appeal to the
middle class and workers. Despite the fact that Emmanuel had a record of
covering up for institutional racism in the police department and refusing to
make any changes at the leadership level, black leaders asked their followers
to vote for Emanuel because they assumed a Latino mayor would be less friendly
toward the minority community than a mayor linked to Obama. http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/507983/humility-black-partnerships-forge-win-rahm-emanuel

This was
two years after Emanuel had ordered that 53 public schools and 61 buildings primarily in
minority neighborhoods be shut down so the city could save $1 billion. This was
carried out as part of a neoliberal agenda where Emmanuel was privatizing
public services and using funds saved by shutting down schools so the city could
then transfer funds for a variety of corporate welfare projects to local
businesses. Moreover, he proposed building a public school near an
environmental toxic site to save money. Nevertheless, blacks voted for him
instead of his Hispanic opponent, despite his record of supporting a racist
police force, and pursuing a racist policy toward public education. Although these
neoliberal policies impacted largely the black community, they are at the core
class and not race issues despite the hit the black community took because it
was the easy target to the white establishment.

Both at the local level as Chicago
politics suggests as well as the national level the issue of race benefits
capital but it only continues unabated because politicians black and white
perpetuate the interests of capital over class and race, the latter which they
use to subordinate the class struggle clearly evident in subtle and blatant
forms. Unfortunately, Black Nationalism in the 20th century has
actually helped to inculcate into the minds to black people that race
consciousness transcends class consciousness. This is certainly since the era
of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro
Improvement Association in the 1920s and down to the late 20th century
with various black leaders advocating nationalism, albeit often for
opportunistic self-serving reasons as in the case of some black Muslims. (William
L. Van Deburg, Modern Black Nationalism: FromMarcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (1996).

Despite the reality that in all people’s
everyday material lives class transcends race, Black Nationalist leaders have
tried to sell illusions not very different than those the church has been
selling to the faithful who need spiritual comfort against the incredible odds
in the real world. By the same token, the liberal integrationist model which
has presented itself as the antithesis of Black Nationalism has also
contributed to distracting from class consciousness in the black community. The
liberal integrationist models rooted in local and national Democrat Party
politics and coming out of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s were in
essence detrimental to the upward socioeconomic mobility of blacks, always as
judged by results clearly evident half a century later.

In fact, those liberal
integrationist experiments of the 1960s and 1970s (segregated housing that
entailed ghetto living, permanent welfare, substandard health and education,
etc.) were in essence intended to provide the minimal social safety net while
at the same time absorbing a tiny percentage of the black elites into the institutional
mainstream. Meanwhile, nothing changed for the vast majority of the population
that remains at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder judged by income
and personal wealth statistics. It is these black elites that the Congressional
Black Caucus represents today as it has historically, rather than the unarmed
black teenager shot by cops every other week in cold blood in one of America’s
cities. Gary Peller,Critical Race Consciousness:The
Puzzle of Representation.(2012).

The underlying problem is social
justice. Both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King recognized toward the end of
their lives when they too finally went beyond the issue of race and on to the
much larger issue of class and the structure of the political economy and
dominant culture. The alienation of blacks in contemporary society is not so
different than it is for Hispanics and other non-European immigrants, or poor
whites. The lumpenproletariat, of which a large segment blacks have been
related by the political economy, are in the same boat as their brethren of
other races and ethnicities. They are all
operating under a system geared toward capital accumulation and bent on using
race, gender, ethnicity and religion, especially targeting Muslims since 9/11,
to divide the masses. This is hardly a new strategy, considering we see it on
the part of the Europeans in the 19th and 20th century
and their behavior toward colonial people as Franz Fanon among others has
argued trying to understand the root causes of class and race alienation.

Alienation, Race, Gender and Class

Like
sexism and xenophobia, racism breeds alienation not only because of the
exclusion from the mainstream but because the people on the receiving end
internalize the identity assigned to them by the hegemonic culture rooted in
discrimination. As George Lulacs, History
and Class Consciousness (1972) pointed out in the 1920s, the issue of
alienation is catalytic in capitalist society, an issue on which Existentialist
thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre dueled in their writings especially as
alienation was dominant in bourgeois life. Not only do we see very clear
evidence of alienation among the petit bourgeoisie in America across all ethnic
and religious groups despite their protestations to the contrary that
capitalism effaces such alienation, the problem is becoming even more
pronounced in a techno-society that continues to alienate human beings from
each other as individuals and social classes striving to assert their identity
and pulled in different directions by forces intended to distract them from the
problem of social justice.

Against
such a culture of alienation even more prevalent today than when George Lucacs
was writing a century ago, it is hardly surprising that racial, ethnic,
religious, and other “communal” identities transcend class identify, especially
for the lumpenproletariat. After all, who wants to identify with the working class?
Whereas the American middle class was the essence of the American Dream a half
century ago, that class is now considerably weakened, debt-ridden and hardly
carries the same prestige it did during the early Cold War. Is it any wonder
that working class people with high school diplomas support a billionaire
right-wing populist presidential candidate Donald Trump who represents their
fears and aspirations, their prejudices and anxieties, even when he invokes
xenophobia, sexism and racism?

What a
better way to co-opt a segment of the disgruntled masses and keep them divided
than to have such right wing populists who point to working people of a
different race, ethnicity and religion? This is exactly what ultra right-wing
politicians did in the interwar era of Fascism and Nazism rooted in
discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and religion. Public
opinion makers – think tanks and media, politicians and community leaders - mold
mass psychology to accept alienation as normal, to reject class consciousness
and to identify with communal groups of similar background instead of seeing
the absence of social justice in its universal framework impacting the working
class and middle class regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or gender.

There are
many sociological and historical studies analyzing the issue of race
transcending class in America that goes hand in hand with gender transcending
class, and ethnicity, and religion. These are all traits of a capitalist
society where the political and social elites co-opt a small percentage of the
leadership of the minority groups, keep these groups separate and use them to
forge political and social consensus that serves a political economy aimed at
preserving the privileges of the wealthy that includes a small percentage of
blacks and other minorities, as well as women. Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton,
a millionaire who represents Wall Street, used her gender as an issue to co-opt
women voters just as the Black Caucus used the issue of race to co-opt black
voters for Clinton.

Divisive
tactics based on race, religion and ethnicity were commonly used by European
colonialists to co-opt the native population and to keep it divided, whether in
Africa, India and the rest of Asia, especially in the 19th and early
20th century. In short, the tactics of European imperialists remain
alive and well in 21st century US.

Throughout history, the
social and political elites in the US have endeavored to suppress any attempt
at raising class consciousness, while exacerbating race, gender, ethnic and
religious consciousness.

It is
hardly surprising that class consciousness is subordinate to race, gender,
ethnicity, and religious consciousness in a society where the entire
institutional structure from educational system to community social clubs have
no references to class because it is an anathema to even mention the class structure
although it is staring at people in the face when they go from the ghetto to
the gated community. It is a testament to the success of the elites in
co-opting the disgruntled masses in the late 1960s and early 1970s by
fragmenting their causes, breaking down their solidarity by focusing on specific
groups that included feminists, blacks, Hispanics, gay rights activists and
environmentalists, and all separate and never in solidarity with each other. (Angela
Davis Women, Race and Class,
1983; also see Paula S.

Rothenberg, Race Class and Gender in the US, 2004)

Civil Rights, Cold
War and Cryptic Jim Crow

As the
white establishment as the co-opted black elites always sing the praises of the
civil rights movement, which did go a very long way in addressing some of the
most egregious segregation problems and it did result in modest upward mobility.
While the civil rights movement had some
limited success, would any one argue that it eliminated institutional racism in
America? If not, to what degree is this the fault of the white establishment and
the black political elites that enjoy influence over black ministers and
community leaders?

The Obama
legacy on which Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2016 is much closer
to the Clinton one in so far as it continued the neo-liberal tradition that
strengthened the richest Americans than it did the bottom 90%; among those
bottom 90% blacks doing very poorly under Obama with youth unemployment at 50%
and income disparity that suggests very clearly institutional racism as a
mechanism that strengthens capital. Given the material lives of the vast
majority of black people, the Black Caucus is about as relevant to black
peoples’ lives as Gloria Steinem and her generation of upper middle class
feminists to the lives of working class women of all ethnic backgrounds.

In many multi-racial
societies, class transcends race but not in the US where the elites of all
ethnic groups and races have joined historically to suppress the concept of
class as radical, socialist or Marxist. By contrast, race isolated as an issue
is acceptable because it speaks to the possibilities of co-optation of a
segment of minorities into the white institutional structure.In this respect, the US is not very different
from South Africa, but very different from the Muslim North African and Middle
East countries where class most definitely transcends race.

In a pluralistic society that claims
to be Enlightenment-inspired merit-based but in reality steeped in racism and
xenophobia diversity is essential to prove that the system works and must be
sustained as is. During the early Cold War when the US was engaged in a global
struggle for ideological and political influence with the Communist countries,
domestically it practiced apartheid while preaching the virtues of democracy to
the rest of the world. The Civil Rights movement emerged from the Cold War
political climate and became necessary to silence critics about the limits of
American democracy. John Kennedy recognized as much but so did Lyndon Johnson.
In the early 21st century America has come full circle with the
anti-Islam campaign under the name “war on terror” elaborately
institutionalized to replace the Cold War. (Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and
the Image of American Democracy. 2011)

Although the internal dynamics of a
society drive domestic policy, in the case of the US foreign policy under Pax
Americana bent on global policing if not hegemony invites attitudes of inevitable
superiority as history suggests in the long standing Protestant tradition of providence
and Manifest Destiny. Just as racial discrimination was part of the conquest at
the expense of Native Americans, Latin Americans from the Polk to the McKinley administration,
there was a parallel race discrimination against blacks that is continuing despite
Affirmative Action as one way to address it.

Diversity and Affirmative Action emerged from
the Civil Rights movement that was in no small measure intended to improve
America’s image abroad, but also to come to terms with the substantial
demographic changes as minorities were becoming a larger percentage of society.
Although loosely applied in many cases, Affirmative Action has helped to bring
more blacks in college and that has been a catalyst to upward social mobility
in a merit-based society. That some whites view Affirmative Action in higher
education as preferential treatment for blacks or reverse discrimination as they
argue in courts, including the Supreme Court, fails to take into account the
centuries of excluding blacks from higher education on the basis of skin color
without any regard to meritocracy.

Education is itself a commodity for
purchase by the wealthiest, considering that the children of the wealthy have
access to the best schools, and the very wealthy are contributors to
universities where their children attend classes. In other words, as a microcosmic
reflection of the larger society, higher education is based primarily on class
and secondarily on race, considering that the rich black students graduating
from expensive private or affluent suburban schools can hardly be placed in the
same category as the inner city public high school graduate where preparation
for college is a luxury instead of a priority. (Ira Katznelson, When
Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in
Twentieth-Century America. 2006)

In the workplace Affirmative Action
been used as a meritocracy mechanism for professional jobs that benefit the
black college-educated middle class now dwindling at an even greater rate than
the white middle class under neoliberal policies of corporate welfare since the
Reagan era at all levels of government.Other than skin color, which they use for their own personal gain, what
exactly do black corporate executives have in common with an unemployed young
man in Detroit? Similarly, white CEOs have more in common with their black
counterparts than with unemployed white youths in rural Louisiana. Solidarity
exists among the black and white capitalist but not necessarily among the black
and white unemployed youth of working class background.

In the era of a two-term black
president, in the era of self-proclaimed pluralism, America is just as steeped
in repression rooted in racism directed at working class blacks as it was
before the Civil Rights movement. This becomes very clear when one looks at the
American justice system and prisons filled with minorities. Moreover, the
courts are institutionally biased against minorities. For example, George
Zimmerman, the “neighborhood watch” volunteer shot and killed 17-year-old
Trayvon Martin in February of 2012, but the court acquitted him. In most cases
police killing unarmed black youth, prosecution and imprisonment of the police
officer and police reform to end racism is rare. (Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
2015;

One could ask what the white and
black political and social elites are doing about this new form of racism and absence of social justice at a time that they have the
audacity to preach human rights and civil rights to the rest of the world. If
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were to return today they would be shocked
that America remains so utterly oblivious to improving social justice for all
people, especially minorities. These civil right leaders of the 1960s would probably not be shocked that the Congressional Black Caucus is on the payroll of
multinational corporations that contribute by the millions to buy influence.
Because the minority political leaders as well as most community and church
leaders feel that racial equality comes within the capitalist system, their
goal is greater integration within the system not the struggle against it. A clear recognition that the capitalist system is the source of
inequality and social injustice as much in the black community as in all others will be the beginning of social action. Major Owens, The Peacock Elite,
A Case Study of the Congressional Black Caucus, 2011)

Neither Black Nationalism nor
liberal bourgeois schemes intended to assuage the entire minority community by
absorbing a small percentage into the institutional mainstream while providing
a weak social safety net for the rest have succeeded
in eliminating
poverty and ending institutional racism. Grassroots organizing and class
solidarity is the only hope blacks, Hispanics and all working people.
Following political and community leaders on the payroll of corporations, or
merely dependent on business funding for their activities will only perpetuate
the status quo. It is not unrealistic to expect institutions under the existing
political economy to continue enjoying various ways of co-opting the
leadership of the black community and quelling any demands for social justice.
As America’s demographics are rapidly changing and the current minorities (13%
black 17% Hispanic) will become the majority in 25 years or so, systemic change
will come collectively by a cross section of people coming together to address
the structural causes of injustice that rest with the social order under the current
political economy.

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."